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October 6, 2011

A Case Of "Cleaning Hand"

If you are a woman you most likely clean your house, like a lot. Unless you're one of those lucky bitches and your husband helps or even better, you have a house cleaner. ﻿I am neither of those. My husband does outside stuff but I am left to do all the inside things and he would NEVER let me hire a house cleaner {trust me, I've asked for one}, that's what I'm for, right?

OK I've gotten way off point. My point is, cleaning sucks.

For example, have you ever gotten "cleaning hand"? You know, when you are holding your beloved Magic Eraser and scrubbing some God forsaken food off your wall thanks to the picky toddler and then you stop and your hand is still in the same Magic Eraser holding position. Or you are wiping down your Picaso baseboards {from far away they look great but up close they are a big ole mess thanks to dog hair and fireplace ash} only to find that your hand permanently looks as if you are making a shadow puppet in the shape of a duck.

Please tell me I'm not alone in this.

Or what about when you spend all evening cleaning, wiping down the counters, putting clothes away, washing dishes, picking up dog toys, etc only to have your husband wake up before you, make his lunch, leave dirty dishes in the sink and crumbs on the counter. Yeah, nothing infuriates me more.

Or when you spend all of nap time putting the toys away and putting the books back on the bookshelf just to have the toddler wake up and throw them all over the living room again? Jokes on me. All I can say is THANK GOD for a playroom. That room is the only room that is permanently messy and whatever, I don't care anymore.

So Molly Maids ladies how do you maintain your home without feeling like all you do is Swiffer and dust? Should I start keeping a daily chore chart? One chore a day every day of the week? One room a day? I don't know. All I know is I feel like all I do is work during the day and clean when I'm home. There is no reality TV watching down time until I sleep, seriously. HELP!

21 comments:

I have a few things I try to get done every day like kitchen, dining room, family room. Then I have a checklist and get to it when I get to it for the rest of the week for bathrooms, floors, dusting. I've seen a cleaning checklist on pinterest that has rest Sunday so that would be good.

As my SWW rant was last week, I clean in pieces. When I think about doing the floors, I do the floors. Sometimes, I'm inspired to do more than that, but most of the time, I was in the middle of something else, so I go back to that. I think there is light cleaning every day to keep from having to do massive cleaning on your down time. I normally will turn on my DVR and start moving around the house. If there's something juicy to watch, I run back in, rewind, and take a break.

But I can see where managing a toddler, hubby, and dogs could make things a little messier. Perhaps, just like a workout schedule, you do one "major" clean like baseboards or window sills.

I don't do a whole clean at once. I clean in pieces when I think about it. Like I usually do a little bit of laundry every night, but even doing that, clothes get stacked up on the dresser and don't get put away for a week and a half. LOL! Saturday or Sunday is usually the kitchen, living room, bathroom super clean day. Vacuum is like every other day maybe not even that cuz the Toddler in the house screams when we bring it out. So...yea. That's how my house gets clean. Barely ever!

I actually did a post on this earlier this summer. I made a little cleaning schedule for myself. It has made my life a lot easier and now I don't spend an entire Saturday cleaning the house, top to bottom.

I totally feel your pain about cleaning the entire kitchen and then Ben comes home late with dinner and leaves his dirty dishes in the sink. I can't understand for the life of me why it is too hard for him to put them one foot to the left in the dishwasher! Drives. Me. Crazy.

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I wish I had an answer. At one point, I tried to do the "something every day" strategy. I'd do the kitchen one night, the bathroom one night, vacuum another, etc...but I hated it. It felt like I was never done with cleaning and I never got a break. For me, I prefer to pick one day a week and do a marathon cleaning session. Of course, this has the down side of shooting the hell out of one day on my weekend. But for me, it's far more depressing to come home from work and know that in addition to making supper and dealing with kids, I also have to clean something.

I hate cleaning, I hate lists, and I too have a full time job with a 4 month old. I am able to work from home two days a week, but between the baby and actually trying to get some work done, NOTHING gets done around the house. I actually think I do more damage on those days since I don't have time to pick up after myself. I can see the judgement on my husband's face when he comes home and wondering what made all that mess. We actually had a cleaning lady before the baby was born but fired her because she was too expensive and wasn't doing a great job. I am considering going back with my tail between my legs and asking her to start up again. She wasn't doing a great job, but I feel she could at least get ahead of the gobs of spit-up and my hair (I am shedding like a mo-fo) that are covering our house. It's awesome.

I am a new follower and this post made me feel as though I could have written something similar because I have such similar thoughts about cleaning- and yes- I know EXACTLY what you are talking about with the magic eraser hand! I would loooovvvee to have a cleaning lady- but for now- it's a simple cleaning list and my bucket of cleaning supplies ;) great post and great blog!

I clean the kitchen everyday (sometimes morning and night) and pick up the family room before I go upstairs to bed every night. Then I dedicate Thursday nights to actually cleaning the whole house. It makes me not a huge fan of Thursdays, but at least that way it's done and I don't have to spend the weekend doing housework haha :)

Cleaning SUCKS. And with 2 dogs and a toddler? Feels almost pointless. I kind of combine 2 strategies. Laundry gets done at night (like washes overnight and dries when I get up in the morning, then folded in the evening while I watch TV), dishes after dinner, and then bathroom once a week before I shower at night. As for the others? I try one room a night, but there's just not enough time in the day...SO THEN? I take G to my mom's house for the day and I deep clean at home. Just don't look at my windows or baseboards ;)

So glad that you wrote this post today. I'm in the same boat. Although future hubby has no outside chores, so yeah. My day off today is being used to grocery shop, do the dishes, do the laundry, etc. Ug. Why do WE have to do it?

Thankfully the bf has to help me out 80% of the time right now with the cleaning.. because I am limited to what I can do.

Now when we move at the end of the month... and after the baby arrives in Jan, I am sure things will be the same as your situation me being left to the inside chores and he gets to do the outside stuff.

At the beginning of each month I create a cleaning schedule. I have 1-2 duties M-TH. I clean the kitchen everyday so this isn't included. Obviously things come up and it's difficult to stick to the schedule 100%, but it's a great guide (esp for the things I forget, like ceiling fans).

I am overly organized, a clean freak and childless, but this what I do. I do some type of cleaning that needs to be done weekly every single night. Mondays I dust, Tuesdays I clean up the kitchen, Wednesday I do bathrooms, floors & trash. If I have something going on one evening & don't get to it I do that on Thursday. I also have a list of monthly items that I just try to do so many a week to get them done each month. I'm getting ready to adapt that. My husband does the vacuuming probably every other week. I'm hoping to change this a bit because it needs to be split up by like rooms or something so that its easier to manage. I also deep clean absolutely every corner of the house once a year during the summer when I'm not working. I'm very lucky because I don't know how it would happen otherwise! I hope something here helps!

I finally broke down and made a chore list. I do a room a day Mon-Fri. Living room (and playroom) Monday, bedroom -Tuesday, nursery- Wednesday, bathrooms- Thursday, and laundry room, spare room- Friday. Saturday is a laundry and picking up and Sunday I do nada. Obviously we do the kitchen each night and pick up each night but each room gets dusted, vaccummed etc on it's day.

HA! The timing of me reading this is too funny. My husband was away for work this week. Due back tonight (Friday). So, I kinda sneakily hired my friend to clean my house Thursday AM. She does that for a living and since husband was away for the week not eating us out of house and home, I decided I could spend the money to clean the house I was too busy this week to do (and we will be gone all weekend so there goes that). ALL day I was SO excited to get home and just do a few chores (feed the babe, laundry, make lunches for next day) and then I could PLAY with baby and relax when she went to bed...with wine obviously. WELL, you can imagine my horror when I got a phone call at 5 pm from the husband saying he would be home a day early and at 7. NOOO! As he made himself dinner I watched the crumbs on the counter appear. I watched him walk on the clean floors with his shoes on. I watched him leave his dirty jacket on my chair. I watched him dirty up my clean bathroom. It was painful. He did say the house looked really clean and asked whenI had time to do that :) I said I stayed up really late the night before :) which is true, I was pickig up clutter to prepare for the cleaning lady :)